A THEOLOGICAL CHALLENGE: COORDINATING BIOLOGICAL, …people.bu.edu/wwildman/images/docs/(13)...

A THEOLOGICAL CHALLENGE:COORDINATING BIOLOGICAL, SOCIAL, ANDRELIGIOUS VISIONS OF HUMANITY

by Wesley J. Wildman

Abstract. This paper attempts two tasks. First, it sketches howthe natural sciences (including especially the biological sciences), thesocial sciences, and the scientific study of religion can be understoodto furnish complementary, consonant perspectives on human beingsand human groups. This suggests that it is possible to speak of amodern secular interpretation of humanity (MSIH) to which theseperspectives contribute (though not without tensions). MSIH is nota comprehensive interpretation of human beings, if only because itadopts a posture of neutrality with regard to the reality of religiousobjects and the truth of theological claims about them. MSIH is cer-tainly an impressively forceful interpretation, however, and it needsto be reckoned with by any perspective on human life that seeks toinsert its truth claims into the arena of public debate. Second, thepaper considers two challenges that MSIH poses to specifically theo-logical interpretations of human beings. On the one hand, in spite ofits posture of religious neutrality, MSIH is a key element in a class ofwider, seemingly antireligious interpretations of humanity, includingespecially projectionist and illusionist critiques of religion. It is con-sonance with MSIH that makes these critiques such formidablecompetitors for traditional theological interpretations of humanbeings. On the other hand, and taking the religiously neutral postureof MSIH at face value, theological accounts of humanity that seek tocoordinate the insights of MSIH with positive religious visions ofhuman life must find ways to overcome or manage such dissonanceas arises. The goal of synthesis is defended as important, and strate-gies for managing these challenges, especially in light of the plural-ism of extant philosophical and theological interpretations of humanbeings, are advocated.

Keywords: atheism; biological sciences; critiques of religion; evo-lutionary biology; evolutionary psychology; metaphysical ambiguity;metaphysics; neurosciences; pluralism; religious anthropology;

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Wesley J. Wildman is Assistant Professor of Theology at Boston University, School ofTheology, 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. An earlier version of thispaper was presented in a public lecture at Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, 25 Sep-tember 1997.

[Zygon, vol. 33, no. 4 (December 1998).]© 1998 by the Joint Publication Board of Zygon. ISSN 0591-2385

religious studies; social sciences; sociobiology; theological anthropol-ogy; theology.

The natural sciences, from physics to evolutionary biology, the social sci-ences, and the scientific study of religion furnish perspectives on humanbeings and human groups that are more or less consonant. None of thesedisciplines is univocal, of course, so a brief presentation of their mainresults cannot be completely impartial. Nevertheless, their provisionalconclusions collectively constitute the basis for a powerful interpretationof human life that is characteristically modern, secular, and interdiscipli-nary; I shall call it the modern secular interpretation of humanity (MSIH).It might well be called modern secular anthropology in accordance with anestablished philosophical use of anthropology, but that would be mislead-ing in view of the existence of scientific disciplines clustered under theheading of anthropology. Similarly, it might be described in ways that indi-cate its connections with evolutionary biology, the social sciences, theneurosciences, or philosophy, but every such discipline-specific name mis-leads. MSIH is a large-scale interpretation of human beings that tran-scends any one scientific, social-scientific, or humanities discipline andyet is the shared currency of thought for most thinkers in all of thesedisciplines.

Although it is an interpretation of human beings, and thus somewhatphilosophical in character, MSIH is a minimalist interpretation in thesense that it extends beyond the results of the scientific disciplines thatfurnish its major insights only by consistently coordinating those insights.It is a theory in the sense of a seeing together of scientific insights intohuman beings. Its force derives from the compatibility of those insights,notwithstanding a few tensions here and there. Its appeal derives bothfrom that and from its modest posture with regard to other interpreta-tions of human life: MSIH does not claim that it includes every worth-while insight into human life, but it does demand that consistency withMSIH should be a goal of any more adventurous interpretation. Forexample, MSIH portrays human beings as ethically concerned but doesnot pass judgment on the reality of the values guiding ethical judgments.Likewise, MSIH presents human beings as religiously concerned in vari-ous ways but does not venture a position on the reality of gods or on theefficacy of paths of liberation that correspond to those human religiousconcerns. Other interpretations of human beings may well take up suchnormative or metaphysical questions; MSIH does not. This posture ofneutrality and the fact that it stays close to virtually unanimously held andhighly credible scientific results are the main reasons why MSIH is simplyassumed as a minimalist starting point in much contemporary intellectuallife. And why not, after all? MSIH covers a lot of territory in spite of its

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minimalist approach and is a truly impressive cultural and intellectualachievement. These considerations are the basis for the argument that anywider interpretation of human beings that values consistency of knowl-edge or seeks a public forum for its claims ought to take consonance withMSIH as a criterion of adequacy. This essay is concerned with the relationbetween MSIH and one such wider interpretation, that of theologians.

Having broached the topic of theology, I will say a word about myterminology. First, I am using the word theology in what may be an unfa-miliar way here. It denotes the activities of religious-intellectual worldmaintenance and exploration or truth-seeking inquiry about religiousmatters (both descriptions are needed to encompass contemporary theo-logical self-understandings); roughly, it is the intellectual wing of religion.As such, theology is a meaningful activity for any religious tradition,regardless of whether that tradition affirms the reality of a theos or not. Infact, every major religion has traditions of theological reflection in thissense. This is actually the usage of ancient Greek philosophers, for whomgod questions were lively issues but were not decisively settled along anyparticular confessional lines. Second, theological interpretations ofhumanity and the human condition have long been described as theologi-cal anthropologies. I shall use this term when I mean an explicit theologicaltheory about human beings. I shall use the term religious anthropologymore generally to include not only theological anthropologies but alsointerpretations of human beings that are implicit in religious traditions,texts, and practices and that could be made explicit as theological anthro-pologies. Obviously, this usage of anthropology should not be confusedwith its usage in the modern scientific discipline that takes the word forits name.

MSIH poses a double challenge to theological anthropology. On theone hand, in spite of its posture of religious neutrality, MSIH is a key ele-ment in a class of wider, seemingly antireligious interpretations of human-ity, including especially projectionist and illusionist critiques of religion.It is consonance with MSIH that makes these critiques such formidablecompetitors for traditional theological interpretations of human beings.This connection between MSIH and antireligious critiques has been feltby some to be so strong that their own wider antireligious interpretationsof human beings are assumed to follow immediately and trivially fromacceptance of what I am calling MSIH. Richard Dawkins, for example,does not even bother to make such a distinction (see Dawkins 1986,1989, 1996). The over-hastiness of such approaches has been demon-strated repeatedly by scholars who position MSIH in religiously positivetheoretical contexts, even though such theoretical ventures are themselvesextremely challenging (see, for example, Barbour 1966, 1997, Peacocke1993, Whitehead 1925). But the close link between MSIH and anti-

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religious interpretations of human beings presents a challenge to theologi-cal anthropology that should be noted and discussed.

On the other hand, theological anthropology that seeks to coordi-nate the insights of MSIH with religious visions of human life mustfind ways to overcome or manage such dissonance as arises. To appreci-ate what such dissonance might mean, consider whether MSIH can beconsistently combined with the implications of such religious ideas assoul (or jiva), reincarnation, creation in the image of God, anatta (no-soul), spirit possession, exorcism, or the veneration of ancestors. Thiswould be extremely difficult, at best. What about religious experience,sanctification, holiness, spiritual bliss, the dark night of the soul, prayer,spiritual gifts, prophecy, wu-wei (active nonaction), flowing with ch’i(energy), healing power, prophetic knowledge, or extrasensory percep-tion? Is MSIH consonant with being under the command of God,receiving the law of God, being in harmony with the mandate ofheaven, or encountering the Word of God? What about sin, salvation,samsara (the process of reincarnation), moksha (liberation), suffering,nirvana, atonement, or divine forgiveness? This list of religious ideas, inaddition to being internally inconsistent, seems radically dissociatedfrom MSIH. The dissonance problem is correspondingly severe.

Why, then, should we pay any attention to such religious ideas in theprocess of trying to formulate adequate interpretations of human beings?Why not solve the dissonance problem by simply discounting traditionalreligious anthropological ideas as nonsense or fantasy? Whereas somethinkers might well do that, theologians typically resist such an approach.One minor reason for this is that combining the results of scientific disci-plines to produce MSIH is a nontrivial problem, because of tensionswithin and conflicts between the scientific theories. Rejecting religiousideas because of internal inconsistency alone would be a move in badfaith. A more important reason is that theologians are well acquaintedwith the way religious symbols function in the lives of people, and thistypically leads them to an intriguing conclusion: Religious symbolsexpress significant wisdom about human nature, although sometimes inarcane language. Moreover, the competent use of such symbolic resourcestransforms human lives in impressive ways.

Now, quite plainly, the fact that billions of people find various subsets ofthese religious ideas about human beings helpful, even indispensable,demands an explanation. Most analysts begin that explanation by agreeingthat people and groups need and construct broader, even religious, inter-pretations of their nature and situation in order to make sense of theirexperience and to guide action. The theologian, however, typically leadsthe way in regarding the transformative and orienting power of such relig-ious symbols as prima facie evidence that their claim to express wisdom

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should be taken seriously. According to the theologian, we cannot simplydispense with large-scale theological interpretations of human beings, atleast not without due care. This insistence has two consequences. On theone hand, at least some theology is compelled to embrace the challenge ofseeking a critical synthesis of MSIH and traditional religious insight. Onthe other hand, because of its familiarity with the wisdom of religious tra-ditions, theology throws its own challenge at anyone developing widerinterpretations of human beings: can the virtues, including the efficacy, oftraditional religious wisdom be registered, even if in dramatically translatedand revalued terms?

In this essay I address the double challenge that MSIH poses to theo-logical anthropology, and the challenge that theology issues in return. Ibegin with a review of MSIH to establish a baseline for further discussion.I cannot give the same kind of review for theological anthropology, how-ever, because religious views of human beings are enormously diverse. Infact, the contemporary discipline of religious studies is on averageinclined to doubt that there is even one religiously crucial characterizationof human beings that is important to all major strands of every majorreligious tradition. I will be content with the vague characterization ofreligious anthropologies as expressive of profound, if preliminary andunsystematic, wisdom about human nature and the human situation.

THE MODERN SECULAR INTERPRETATION OF HUMANITY

MSIH can be sketched without too much distortion in spite of the com-plexities involved, such as theoretical disputes within each discipline andconceptual tensions between disciplines. I aim to show that a unified inter-disciplinary interpretation of human beings exists and that it has a dynamicstructure: a unanimously agreed-on center around which are clustered anumber of contested issues, each of which is the focus of ongoing investi-gation. MSIH is defined primarily by the unanimous core and secondarilyby contested issues in the sciences, together with a series of cautious pos-tures toward those debates, each posture guided both by the probable out-come of scientific research programs and by habits of thinking proveneffective in the sciences. The general policy is caution: MSIH does not runahead of scientific consensus. Thus, it is content to register disagreementsand adopt probabilistic stances where a more adventurous interpretation ofhuman beings might leap decisively to a less well-grounded conclusion. Ofcourse, because of this dynamic structure, to sketch MSIH is partly a mat-ter of describing scientific consensus and partly a matter of constructing aframework within which scientific agreements and disagreements can beunderstood as contributing to a large-scale interpretation of human beings.I shall try to distinguish between the descriptive and constructive modes ofsketching MSIH where necessary.


This review will be from the bottom up, as it were, beginning the storywith evolutionary biology, which of course presupposes and is consistentwith biochemistry and physics.

Evolutionary Biology. Evolutionary biology presents a vision ofhuman beings as the complex, provisional products of an ongoing process—a process regulated by natural laws and open to chance events. All evo-lutionary biologists agree that evolution is a process driven by chancevariations in the genetic makeup of organisms, competition for resourceswithin niches that make such variations relevant to the probability ofreproducing healthy offspring, and then the natural selection of geneticvariants that best succeed in reproducing. These basic insights constitutethe pillars of the modern synthesis between Darwinian evolutionary the-ory and the theory of genetics: genetic variation, competition, differentialreproductive advantage, natural selection, and genetic transmission. Thisis one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time, regardless ofculture, and its implications for human self-understanding constitute astriking advance with which every philosophical and religious traditionmust come to terms.

The modern synthesis has proved correct in the general outline of whatit affirms and has proved mistaken only in details or when it has claimedtoo much for itself, for there is much more to the evolutionary processthan the modern synthesis has recognized. For example, the assumptionof one-way influence from genes to proteins has collapsed with the discov-ery of situations in which proteins modify genetic structure. The ability ofcreatures to modify their environment in ways that alter the probability ofsuccessful reproduction has proved more widespread than formerly sup-posed (it is particularly obvious in builders such as beavers, hive insects,and human beings). Selection effects across multiple species simultane-ously have been discovered, demonstrating the interconnectedness of ani-mal and plant life. And cooperation and altruism have been demonstratedto be relevant factors in the evolutionary process, along with competitionfor limited resources, which suggests that natural selection could be prof-itably analyzed in terms of units of species or kin groups.

On this much there is general agreement. By contrast, directionality inthe evolutionary process is a contested point. Although some biologistsaffirm that the evolutionary process has a kind of directionality without aspecific goal—an impulse toward complexification, perhaps—virtuallynone affirm that the process is clearly directed, and the vast majorityassume that the process is entirely undirected apart from limitations intro-duced by natural laws. The uncontested statistical reality is an ever-broadening, niche-filling process of speciation, although the rate of spe-ciation, whether or not it occurs in brief bursts punctuating relativelystable periods of equilibrium, and the evolutionary side effects of mass

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extinctions remain contested issues. Statistically, of course, this character-istic broadening entails a certain amount of increasing complexity onsome evolutionary fronts. The question of whether there is some impulsetoward complexity translates at this level to the question of whether thestatistically predictable increase in complexity is enough to account forthe complexity we see around us.

Among most scientists, there is an understandable methodologicalpreference for minimalist theories, until a failure of explanatory powerforces a change. But a number of evolutionary biologists have concludedthat the modern synthesis indeed suffers from explanatory impotence.This dawning worry is driven by more than the question of directionalityin evolution; there are also problems surrounding the adaptiveness oftransitional forms, the relative absence of transitional forms in large tractsof the fossil record, the nonexistence of incontestable examples of newspeciation (defined by the impossibility of interbreeding) in our owntime, and the statistical improbability of the trillions of exceedinglyunlikely events needed to make a complex organism regardless of howlong the biosphere affords for that development. All of this has raised thequestion, therefore, of whether the modern synthesis leaves out a giantchunk of the story: regularities in the evolutionary process that wouldmake less improbable the changes that have occurred, regularities thatcould be described only in terms of higher-level laws.

However the controversy unfolds, nothing about the modern synthesisis being abandoned except perhaps its overhasty claims to completeness ofexplanation. On this universally accepted mainstream view, regardless ofwhat higher-level laws might eventually be discovered, the contingency ofthe human species is evident: Our appearance is the result of a combina-tion of chance and law, our physical form might have been quite different,we might not have appeared at all, and we will be superseded by better-adapted species for as long as the biosphere remains habitable.

Neurosciences. The studies conducted under the umbrella of theneurosciences—from neurophysiology to cognitive psychology—have ledto spectacular advances in the understanding of animal development,movement, sensation, cognition, emotion, and communication. Thoughthese studies are only in the early stages, there is a consensus among neu-roscientists that the amazing capacities of animal brains are due at least inpart to the amazing chemical properties of the brain, and especially tothose properties arising within, and at the synaptic clefts between, neu-rons. This agreement on the necessity of neural processes for mentalitymarks an impressive advance over previous conceptions of human mentallife, and also constitutes the guiding hypothesis for future neurophysio-logical research. But the mysteries of mental life are such that philoso-phers and neuroscientists find themselves asking an obvious question: Is


biochemistry sufficient to account for everything that brains are calledupon to do, including serving as the basis for personality, for the qualia ofself-conscious experience, and for every aspect of mental life?

Neuroscience makes a crucial contribution to MSIH by virtue of sci-entific agreement on the thesis that human brains are necessary forhuman minds. But MSIH is also disturbed by ancient questions—essentially metaphysical questions—about the nature of human con-sciousness. Neuroscience forces these questions into the open in a freshway that some believe allows science to make a serious contribution toanswering them. But everything in this area is contested: the probablescientific conclusions, viable methods by which neuroscience mightcontribute to such conclusions, and the ability of neuroscience to makeany useful contribution at all. At this point MSIH is forced to proceedcautiously in relation to the various metaphysical and methodologicalpossibilities, delaying final judgment until the evidence permits it.MSIH is not equally open to all hypotheses, because its policy of stay-ing close to scientific results implies that it ought to be guided by theprobable outcome of scientific research efforts. With this we move fromthe stable core of MSIH toward its dynamic periphery. To see what ismeant by this, consider the following example of a contested issue withmetaphysical implications.

Is there an explanatory gap between brain function and mental func-tion, one that perhaps requires some version of the concept of an indivisi-ble mind or soul that has been so familiar in the religious visions ofhumanity of many cultures? How would we settle such a question? At thisearly stage in the history of neuroscience, it seems to be a matter on whichwith some justification we might bet either way, notwithstanding the factthat many neuroscientists are skeptical about metaphysical souls. Con-sider the pros and cons. On the one hand, a real metaphysical soul, in thesense of a nonphysical yet individual locus of human personhood, permitsone to speak straightforwardly of a seat for freedom and the moral life. Italso has important religious significance for many traditions of religiousthought (though not in some forms of Indian Buddhism), especially inregard to life after death, and arguably helps ease the problem of qualia(though this, I think, is dubious). On the other hand, to bet on souls is tobet that our scientific ignorance in this instance cannot be overcome. Buttheological betting on gaps has produced poor returns over the centuries,and the prospects are not much better this time, because the causal con-nections between both healthy and damaged brains and emotion, person-ality, and action are already well established. Furthermore, if we posit agap between the physical and the mental that might be crossed by soul,then we would be hard pressed to make evolutionary sense of the emer-gence of Homo sapiens sapiens without invoking some evolutionarily

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unrecognizable injection of this soul at some point into human beings,and then presumably at some point in the life of every embryo or infant.The returns on such a strategy (which is in essence the one defended incurrent Roman Catholic moral teaching; see Catholic Church 1987,§§1–5; 1995, §§ 60–61) rapidly diminish.

Although I emphasize that the core of MSIH is defined by scientificagreement, it remains important to ask whether MSIH leans one way oranother in such a controversy, one that is peripheral relative to the unani-mous core of MSIH. I think it does lean—with most neuroscientists (thisis the descriptive part) and with solid justification (this is the constructivepart)—cautiously in the direction of betting on gapless continuity fromthe lowest, least complex level of the organization of matter to the high-est, most complex level. Most neuroscientists interpret the phenomenonof qualia as an unexpected but still biological characteristic of sufficientlycomplex central nervous systems. They take the effects of Prozac andother mood-altering drugs to indicate that personality is intimatelydependent on brain structure and function. They view the causal connec-tions between brain lesions and mental function (such as conception ofthe self or perception of objects) as strong evidence that a gap between thephysical and the mental is explanatorily superfluous. They allow thatsome important concepts in our folk-psychological self-descriptions mayemerge as natural kinds at the level of brain function, in the way that theconcept of learning something until it becomes second nature neatly cor-responds to the processes by which various kinds of nondeclarative, non-cognitive memories are established. But they fully expect others to find nonatural correlation with brain processes and functions, in the way thatalmost all emotion seems too diffuse in terms of brain function to be ameaningful natural kind at the neurophysiological level. How the folk-psychological category of soul will fare with time and more detailedknowledge of the brain is hard to say. But if its usefulness persists, thenMSIH bets that it is more likely to be retained as a higher-level descrip-tion of brain processes that can also be described in more detailed terms ata variety of lower levels.

This is a bet, of course, a probabilistic leaning of MSIH in the direc-tion of a particular metaphysical point of view; perhaps it can be regardedeven as a hypothetical stance in search of correction. It is certainly not thedecisive result that hasty secular enthusiasts might want. Nor does this betoccur at the core of the interpretation of human beings that is MSIH. Butit does show up on the periphery, because MSIH is influenced, andrightly so, by the methodological commitments of the sciences. Themetaphysical question remains genuinely open, but especially because ofthe neurosciences, MSIH bets against explanatory gaps and in favor of ageneric form of physicalism, one characterized by complexity of


organization at various levels of physical reality, within and betweenwhich levels causal relationships are active.

Social Sciences. Sociology and psychology have yielded a vision ofhuman beings as adaptable, anxious, and curious; led by powerful psycho-logical drives and needs for communal identity; liable to violence, mentaldisease, and fantasy; and embodying ultimate and preliminary commit-ments in linguistic habits, symbolic systems, and social organizations. Thesociology of knowledge has shown that human knowledge is alwayssocially located, sometimes trivially so as not to interfere with the publicstanding of such knowledge, but sometimes in profound ways that makeit extremely difficult to allow for socioeconomic factors and personalmotivations in assessing knowledge claims. The details vary greatly amongdisciplines and between theories, but the general outlines are affirmed incommon.

At the level of culture in particular, the needs for orientation in theworld and for legitimation of social practices find in the human imagina-tion and in our capacity for symbolic manipulation a perfect match. Theresult is the construction of complex, symbolically potent worldviews thatpermit many cultural activities to carry on undisturbed by questionsabout their legitimacy. The benefits of such automatic legitimationinclude greater stability of economic and social systems and psychologi-cally calmer and better-adapted individual human beings. All of this pro-motes the uninterrupted advance of scientific inquiry and a wealth ofcreative expression, from art to Zen meditation and from architecture tozoology. Negative consequences take the form of an inhibited or perhapsrepressed capacity for cultural self-criticism and sometimes intolerance ofthose beyond the boundaries of the cultural group or of those within thegroup who do not conform to the group’s active structures of legitima-tion. (See, for example, Berger 1967.)

To arrive at such results, sociology needs to identify meaningful pat-terns within group life. It is only with such an interpretation in hand thatsociologists may discern anything resembling lawlike connections. Like-wise, psychological theories of the influence of social and family environ-ment on the formation of human personality and propensities for actiondepend on interpretations that select out certain environmental factors asthe most significant features for psychology. Such interpretation is impor-tant in every kind of science, whether it is interpretation of data or theo-ries of instrumentation. But the dependence on a layer of interpretation isso much heavier in the social sciences than in most physical sciences thatsociology and psychology have many more legitimate theoretical optionsand conflicts. Nevertheless, these conflicts always surround finding thecausal connections among group life, family life, and personal life; thebasic assumption that nothing more is needed to account for the patterns

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we see in people and groups is not questioned in the same way, at least notby sociologists and psychologists. They rightly adopt a minimalistapproach to explanation as a necessary component in the success of theirwork.

Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology. The social and biologicalsciences have joined forces in evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.This has rendered social organization—including moral and religioustraditions and practices—increasingly susceptible to forceful analyses interms of drives toward genetic perpetuation. Whereas the sociology ofknowledge drew our attention to the fact that the presuppositions of ourworld making were received from others and are usually not capable ofdecisive justification, evolutionary psychology provides a partial vision ofthe motivation for world making: It is a matter not merely of a need forexistential orientation but also of a struggle to ensure genetic self-perpetuation. This drive to genetic self-perpetuation is expressed first psy-chologically, in the drives for personal survival and reproduction, andthen socially, in the drive for kin group and species survival.

Evolutionary psychology and sociobiology have some trouble account-ing for cultural variations in ethical and religious worldviews; we mightexpect more uniformity in moral convictions than we in fact seem to find.Since gene perpetuation is a specieswide interest, however, it makes senseto look more closely. It may well turn out that the variations in moralconvictions are relatively minor when compared with the larger agree-ments, and it may also be discovered that serious variations can be ren-dered explicable with reference to peculiar contextual features ofindividual groups. This is research that mostly remains to be done. Never-theless, it is already obvious that evolutionary psychology and sociobiol-ogy are useful tools for understanding aspects of many kinds of culturaland ethical practices, and especially those with some cross-cultural gener-ality. Here again we see a distinction between a unanimous contributionto the core of MSIH and contested areas that are registered around itsperiphery.

Theories of Ethics and Religion. Projective and illusionist theories ofethics and religion have been given impetus by these developments inMSIH. The interpretations of religion furnished in the early decades ofwhat was to become the sociology and psychology of religion—theoriesassociated with names such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, FriedrichNietzsche, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and WilliamJames—all presupposed that human beings are bundles of drives andimpulses grouped in dense relational networks with other such bundles,and that they need and have the means to construct interpretations of theworld that are good for both orienting themselves within it and managing


group life. These early theorists and their heirs have to a considerableextent made good on this presupposition.

The projective impulse, though explained in widely varying ways byindividual theorists, seems indispensable for understanding religiousworldviews and the origins and functions of myth and ritual. Likewise,the psychological needs for orientation to the world and for social stability—arising in part from evolutionary drives and depending on the projec-tive impulse for its satisfaction—are crucial components in any adequateaccount of ethical and religious systems. Such systems may have origi-nated as codifications of the highest convictions of the groups in whichthey emerged. For example, a close analysis of ethical rules concerningmarriage and violence according to evolutionary biology makes it clearhow following those rules satisfies gene-perpetuation instincts at the per-sonal and kin level. Game theory has proved useful for this purposebecause it helps us to understand how such interests could be fosteredmore effectively by altruistic behavior than by outright selfishness undercertain circumstances.

Similarly, religious concepts such as God and karma and Dao can havea profound regulative effect on social life: They legitimate religious-moralrules by weaving them into narratives that are broad enough to embraceideas about nature and history at the same time. Moreover, such narrativescan effectively furnish existential orientation and comfort as well as grouppurpose and identity. Such lines of analysis have been standard fare in thepsychology and sociology of religion for over a century and have repeat-edly made good on their promise of explanatory efficiency. For this rea-son, then, MSIH counts these social and psychological dynamics asindispensable components in any adequate account of ethics and religion.

Showing somehow that the concepts of God or karma or Dao corre-spond to reality would not affect this central conviction of MSIH. In fact,we may count it as MSIH’s greatest gamble and greatest achievement thatits account of ethics, religion, social groups, personality, and mental liferemains neutral to nonphysical, transcendental realities. MSIH feels noneed of hypotheses beyond those constructed from the raw materials ofphysicalism, toward which MSIH leans in accordance with what hasproved to be the most effective method for advancing the natural sciences.Likewise, MSIH sees no justification for rejecting such hypotheses out-right, as an enthusiastic and hasty wielder of Ockham’s razor might. Thesimple fact is that not enough data are available to determine the matter,nor is there good reason to bet one way or the other as there was with thequestion of physicalism. This is a limited form of agnosticism at the levelof ontology: MSIH is neutral with regard to religious realities.

This makes for an interesting contrast, one dictated by the shape of sci-entific consensus. On the one hand, MSIH adopts a hypothesis with

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regard to explanatory efficacy in the sciences, betting that there are noexplanatory gaps, that some form of physicalism that involves connectedlevels of complex organization obtains, and that the sciences and MSIHitself will continue to display their customary brilliance in facilitatinghuman self-understanding at many levels. This is one of the greatcultural-intellectual wagers of the twentieth century and one that appearsincreasingly shrewd with each passing year, though it will doubtless con-tinue to have the status of a bet for many years to come. On the otherhand, MSIH remains neutral to transcendent realities, because the evi-dence from nature or in human life, especially in light of the social andpsychological sciences, remains intransigently out of focus with respect topermitting the clarity of vision needed to bet one way or the other. Thefact that there are so many religious scientists suggests that this is at leastas much description of MSIH as it is my own construction.

MSIH on the Relations between the Sciences. MSIH coordinatesspecific results concerning human beings from a large group of disci-plines. Just as important, however, MSIH enshrines at its core assump-tions about the relationships between those disciplines, each of which hasits own characteristic data, theories, and forms of explanation. The usualmodel for these relationships is a hierarchy, with each level correspondingto a special science, and the space between each two levels correspondingto the relationships obtaining between the higher-level and the lower-levelscience. A more adequate model may prove to be less tidy, because therelationships between sciences sometimes jump levels, but that would be amere adjustment. The great virtue of the hierarchy model is that it drawsattention to the dependence of higher levels on lower levels. That is, itexpresses the fact that ethics and religion depend on sociology and psy-chology, which in turn depend on the neurosciences, with cell biology,biochemistry, physical chemistry, atomic physics, and subatomic physicsfollowing in order. Each level depends on the one below it in the sensethat organization, patterns, and regularities at the higher level occur onthe substrate of the lower-level structures and functions.

The concept of supervenience offers a convenient way of speakingabout the relationship between higher-level and lower-level properties.We may say roughly that higher-level properties supervene on lower-levelproperties if no two situations are identical with respect to lower-levelproperties without also being identical with respect to higher-level prop-erties. Of course, speaking of supervenience adds nothing substantive tothe conversation because it is merely a terminological shorthand. Pre-dictably, therefore, the definitions of supervenience have proliferated astheorists have tried to capture the nuances of the dependence relation thatobtains between higher and lower levels in MSIH’s hierarchy of the sci-ences. This stands as a warning against trying to represent the concept of


supervenience as a solution to the problem of the relationship betweenlevels of the hierarchy of sciences; a good definition of superveniencemerely clears the ground for a more substantive discussion of howhigher-level properties relate to lower-level ones. But none of the debatessurrounding definitions of supervenience and their usefulness jeopardizesMSIH’s central thesis that a hierarchical organization characterized bydependence of higher on lower levels applies between the various scienceswith which it is concerned.

I have argued that MSIH bets that there is no real explanatory gap atany level of this hierarchy, neither in the dependence of cell function onbiochemical processes, nor in the dependence of mental function on brainfunction, nor anywhere else. Of course, there is a great deal to beexplained at each level that no lower level can manage. But the workinghypothesis of MSIH, tentative though it may be, is that of its constituentsciences: the basic constituents of nature, the way they are organized, andthe way they are contextualized are the most fundamental pieces of thepuzzle. That is enough to explain higher-level functions in a loose sense of“explain” even though we ourselves can rarely provide detailed explana-tions of one level using categories at any lower level. In fact, we typicallyneed to introduce concepts for characterizing the function of higher-levelsystems in order to simplify the explanatory story and reduce the impactof our relative ignorance of boundary conditions of complex systems.That is to say, we would need to know a ton of precise information aboutboundary conditions to explain how a protein opens the way it does whena phosphate group attaches to it, and it seems fairly clear that we couldnever give the explanation in those terms. But if we introduce the con-cepts of protein structure and types of folding that occur under variousstructural transformations, then we can get on with trying to understandthe function of proteins without having to worry about the nightmareboundary conditions that would have to be invoked to explain in precisechemical terms the protein’s folding and unfolding. Perhaps computersimulations will eventually duplicate the structural changes, but there isno need to wait for such confirmation before proceeding with analysis interms of the higher-level concepts.

There is always a chance that a gap is silently passed over when expla-nation shifts to a higher level, because we can rarely show decisively inparticular cases that lower-order properties together with specific bound-ary conditions produce the higher-order properties we seek to explain.Nevertheless, MSIH and science in general hypothesize that the higher-level explanation is really nothing more than a massively simplified ver-sion of a lower-level explanation. That is, there is nothing problematicabout the explanatory gap because it is a gap merely in practice and not inprinciple—we jump to higher levels of explanation to overcome the

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difficulties associated with ignorance of boundary conditions, chaoticinterference with prediction, our need to understand in terms of imagesor manageable mathematics, and the impossibility of making sound cal-culations or in most cases even applicable computer simulations of therequired complexity. Moreover, there are enough spectacular, explicitdemonstrations of how higher-level properties really do result fromlower-level properties that the assertion of no in-principle gaps (I’ll call itthe no-gaps hypothesis for short) is well attested. For example, neuro-physiologists are learning how to reduce in detail the higher-level propertyof the apparently fortuitous turning of neurons as they grow backwardfrom the eye toward the visual cortex to lower-level properties of chemicaltransactions between proteins on the retractable growth cone of the neu-ron and certain highly specific proteins in the path of the growing neu-ron. With so richly and intimately detailed an account almost in hand,the exhaustive explanation of higher-level properties of brain cells interms of lower-level chemical properties of macromolecules seems the saf-est hypothesis. As a result, there seems no reason to assume that theremight be in-principle gaps between these or any other levels.

Of course, some philosophers claim that there really is something elselurking in those explanatory gaps. For example, some of the more radicalprocess metaphysicians (see Birch 1990) predict that causal explanationsof biological processes cannot be complete unless explicit explanatoryaccount is taken of the contributions of divine input and concrescentcreativity in each occasion of the world’s becoming. If this prediction wereproved correct, then MSIH in its current no-gaps form would be over-come. Most process metaphysicians, however, hold the less aggressive viewthat the divine and concrescently creative components in the occasions ofnature give rise to the natural laws and regularities as well as the chanceoccurrences and free choices that MSIH simply explains differently. Thedecision between such empirically equivalent views would then have to besettled on grounds other than those to which scientific experiments andtheorizing could make contributions. In that case, the minimalist, no-gaps bet of MSIH could be defended without reservation. Moreover, thegreat strength of the no-gaps gamble is that it increases motivation for sci-entific discovery, because it is really only on the assumption of no in-principle gaps that scientists would conceive of the kinds of research pro-grams that they do. Aristotle denied the no-gaps view of Democritus inbrilliant, persuasive fashion (in his day; see Aristotle, On the Generation ofAnimals v. 8), and the rule of Aristotle’s opinion arguably kept scientificadvance at bay for two thousand years (though his brilliant observationsset an impressive standard for some types of work taken up by subsequentscientists; see the zoological works of Aristotle, listed in the bibliography).From that point of view, at least, we are better off with the no-gaps view


for as long as we are unable to resolve the subtle metaphysical debates thatwould force a change of strategy.

The Significance of MSIH for Theological Anthropologies. This hasbeen a rapid survey of some of the main elements of MSIH, staying onthe main roads common to theorists’ various mappings of the wider terri-tory and merely hinting at the numerous controversies on the side roads.Nevertheless, even if I do not say much in detail about any traditionalreligious anthropology in particular, it is clear that MSIH represents achallenge to traditional religious anthropologies of almost all kinds, inalmost all traditions. MSIH is far more specific than traditional religiousanthropologies, even at the level of abstraction I have described it; it isbased on general principles that are cross-culturally applicable; it leads tosubtle models for the origin and development of religious beliefs in indi-viduals and groups; and it produces predictions for behavioral tendencies.Perhaps most important, it is a progressive theory and allows of apparentlyunlimited correction and improvement in broad forums of publicdiscourse.

Although never beyond criticism or correction, therefore, MSIH istheoretically impressive and conceptually sturdy. Its formidable array ofvirtues entails that the burden of proof is on other insights into the natureof human beings to show themselves consistent with it, or well justified todispute it. Because of this, MSIH must be given a central place in theevaluation of specific theological anthropologies. This of course supposesthat theological anthropology aims to venture a vision of humanity that isintellectually illuminating, publicly debatable, and theoretically sophisti-cated; otherwise it can say what it likes without regard to any other per-spective. On my assumptions about the purpose of theologicalanthropology, however, traditional forms of it must engage MSIH. Whenthey do, they have found themselves with a lot of work to do to renderthemselves consistent with mainstream biological and sociological com-mitments, or even to find intelligible ways to disagree with those commit-ments. This difficulty has two parts.

THE FIRST DIFFICULTY: THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND

CRITIQUES OF RELIGION

The thorniness of MSIH for theological anthropology lies partly in theaid it gives reductionistic critiques of religion and central theological con-cepts. MSIH may be formally neutral to the question of the reality ofreligious objects, concerning itself only with the function, efficacy, andcausal properties of religious feelings and ideas, languages, and activities.Yet precisely because of the relatively impressive way it handles what is inits domain, MSIH can be used in theoretical valuations of religion to

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argue both that religion is nothing other than mental states, social dynam-ics, natural functions, and causes, and that people think differently onlyby mistake. Properly judicious scholarly contributions to MSIH can bedistinguished from the reductionistic critiques of religion that make sucheffective use of it. The move from analyzing influences on religion or cor-porate religious structures to the valuational posture necessary for large-scale critiques of religion is readily apparent to most theorists; only a wildand woolly few would insist that this move is logically coerced—and Ithink they would err in so insisting.

So we might ask, where is the problem? Theological anthropology cangrant as much ground as necessary to MSIH, and the final interpretativestep still remains open for either religiously affirmative theological anthro-pology or reductionistic critiques of religion carried off (perhaps) in thename of fidelity to the goal of authentic human life. All that is needed, itappears, is to make sure that theological anthropology is consistent withthe most strongly attested points in MSIH, and then the challenge will beovercome. This line of solution is, I think, the correct one. But it is easyfor theologians to embrace it hastily, as if exhausted from worrying aboutthe power of reductionistic critiques and thankful for a way out. To avoidthe trivialization of properly reductionistic critiques of religion, it isimportant to examine patiently whether anything may or must be learnedfrom these critiques before rushing on to secure theological anthropologyfrom threat.

For this purpose, it is helpful to notice that MSIH is awkward because itoffers a provisional account of every aspect of religion—from pious feelingsto sacred doctrines, from personal conversion to corporate rituals, fromethical power to achieved sainthood. This leaves no special ground fortraditional religious anthropologies to stand on, be they cognitive-metaphysical visions of souls and salvation or pragmatic-epistemicprocesses of transformation. Enlightenment critiques of religion tended toleave ground open for nineteenth-century religious romantics to buildreactionary theological anthropologies on, say, feeling rather than thinking,or subjectivity rather than objectivity. But MSIH leaves no grounduntilled. Neither the domains of emotion, will, or intellect nor the loci ofindividual or society are left as distinctive turf for specifically religiousanthropology. Neither the radical subjectivity of Søren Kierkegaard([1846] 1941) nor the objectivity of the human position in the great chainof being (Lovejoy 1936) is left untouched, so neither can be promulgatedas the characteristic, nonsecular heart of theological anthropology. NeitherPaul Tillich’s (1951) ecstatic reception of revelation, nor Karl Rahner’s(1976) apprehension of an infinitely mysterious horizon, nor Sankara’s(1965) cultivation of discrimination, nor Bhavaviveka’s (1989) process ofliberation from the illusions of reality, nor the Qur’anic portrayal of


humanity under the command of God, nor the Jewish conception of acovenant expressed in the giving of the law to Jews, nor the Chinese idealof harmonious existence in the ambit of the Dao of reality, nor the mystic’ssuprarational experiences—none of these ideas has proved impervious toanalysis and explanation at the hands of MSIH. Its invasion has been spec-tacular and comprehensive, and there appears to be nothing to prevent thisinvasion from being exhaustive as well. Though it must be admitted thatMSIH can handle objective features of human existence with more com-fort than subjective ones, not even the most inward subjectivity is beyondits explanatory reach, at least in some respects.

It follows that there is no simple strategy for blocking or sideliningreductionistic critiques of religion, as there might be if religious anthro-pology could be given some distinctive locus in human nature, out ofreach of MSIH. It also follows that the force of these critiques does notdepend on contradictions between religious and modern secular readingsof human nature—contradictions that might later be overcome. The pur-veyors of these critiques are happy enough (and usually right) to point outthe respects in which traditional religious anthropologies express igno-rance of, or mistaken judgments about, human nature (as perhaps in thecase of traditional usage of the concepts of soul or ecstasy or revelatoryinspiration). But the most viable critiques of religion are no longer para-sitic upon religion, needing religion for their very self-definition, as athe-istic or antireligious views tended at one time to be. Rather, these critiquesderive from stable and independent interpretations of the world that canbe turned to the criticism of religion or not, as desired. Ironically, then,reductionistic critiques of religion have outgrown their shrill antireligiousorigins to become mere components of large-scale interpretations ofhuman life with enough self-confidence to be able to appreciate the wis-dom of certain aspects of traditional religious anthropologies, and therebyto subsume what is deemed valuable within them. The core of MSIH inits neutrality toward religious realities is accepted by almost all contempo-rary large-scale interpretations of human life, whether religious or antire-ligious. Where a disagreement with something at the periphery of MSIHexists, as, for example, over the nature of the human soul in certain theo-logical anthropologies, it can be acknowledged explicitly and stands as aprediction that MSIH’s physicalist bet will eventually lose. Such an out-come would not affect the core of MSIH, but it would be an importantdevelopment at its dynamic margins.

So exactly how should we assess the relative strength of traditionalreligious anthropologies and the antireligious extensions of religiouslyneutral MSIH? On the one hand, antireligious interpretations of human-ity, being valuational, normative, recent extensions of MSIH, achieveconsistency with that well-attested vision more easily, whereas theological

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anthropology, being far older and thus bearing many concepts that areforeign to MSIH, must struggle painfully toward a new synthesis. Moreo-ver, antireligious interpretations of human life are to a considerable extentable to subsume the traditional wisdom of their religious counterparts.And they can explain the existence of religious anthropologies as merelyone more instance of projective wishing trying to rescue humanity fromthe stark truth about itself: that religion is just a by-product of the self-referential entanglement of humanity in its own confused need to secureprotection from the horrors and boredom of life. These factors explain themarginalization of traditional theological anthropologies in contemporaryintellectual life, to the point that asserting them appears arcane or reac-tionary—or even completely arbitrary, in the sense that there are no goodreasons to affirm them when consistency with MSIH furnishes a criterionof adequacy. It is the comprehensiveness of MSIH in conjunction withthe appeal of Ockham’s metaphysically minimalistic razor that makes thecritiques appealing to it so potent. No wonder so many contemporaryreligious anthropologies withdraw from the fray and depend heavily on aprivatized language-game strategy or on the fundamentalist reversion toforms of external authority to justify their terminology and assertions.

On the other hand, religious anthropologies embody a tremendousamount of wisdom with regard to the spiritual life, the agonies of suffer-ing and guilt, the cultivation of personal maturity, and the honing ofhuman consciousness. Antireligious interpretations of human beings havenot yet found ways to incorporate enough of this vast body of knowledge,because MSIH has not either; both are behind the curve in this respect.Moreover, if traditional religious anthropology could be rendered in termscompatible with those of MSIH—a virtue the recent antireligious inter-pretations possess in virtue of their being born in the era of MSIH—thefirst advantage of the antireligious visions mentioned above would beneutralized. So there is a lot riding on forging and testing syntheses of tra-ditional theological anthropologies and MSIH. Before addressing thistopic in the next section, however, we need to face squarely the charge ofarbitrariness that antireligious views of human life lay at the feet of theo-logical anthropologies.

The charge of arbitrariness is simple to state: If you don’t have a goodreason to affirm a theological anthropology, it is at best arbitrary to do so.We can leave unspoken what it is at worst. We might try to answer thischarge by saying that “reductionistic critiques cannot coerce rationalassent any more than theological anthropologies can,” in a kind of you-too argument. The problem with this is that the theoretical advantage ofantireligious interpretations of humanity, which I have just outlined, issignificant: They are capable of subsuming many of the best insights ofreligious anthropologies while explaining the latter’s mistakes as


understandable side effects of being in the grip of a powerful illusion.Theological anthropologies cannot do the same for their antireligiouscompetitors, at least not as specifically, and not without a thoroughgoingsynthesis with MSIH. The charge of arbitrariness is hard to shake withsuch a direct apologetic strategy.

How, then, can the charge of arbitrariness be met? I think we need notbe creative here. It is enough to follow Tillich’s indirect apologetic strategyof interpreting the category of the religious in terms of ultimate concernrather than ultimate reality. In this way, we can treat as religious (in thisbroad sense) certain of the so-called antireligious interpretations ofhumanity—the ones that register an ultimate concern. Indeed, I wouldsay that this move reclassifies as “religious” all of the most interestingantireligious anthropologies, such as the atheistic-existentialist ones heav-ily invested in the concept of authenticity. The presupposed worldviews ofthe reconfigured class of religious anthropologies would then be morediverse and would include some that many traditionally religious peoplemight find alarming or distasteful. They would range from profoundatheism to Qur’anic monotheism, from Nietzschean perspectivalism in ameaningless world to traditional Buddhist accounts of suffering, no-self,and liberation. This richer scenario for theological anthropology is morerealistic because it enables us to register the power and delicacy of the bestof the so-called antireligious views. For example, we find in some atheistexistentialists an impressive kind of authentic fury or resignation, directedtoward or at least caused by a cosmos that condemns us to an unfulfillabledesire for fulfillment (see Sartre 1948, for example). This is as profound aresponse to the environment of human life as can be found, and in therespects that count, it is as religious as the most spiritual worship.

It may seem to be Trojan-horse foolishness to speak of theologicalanthropology so generously, since it brings antireligious critiques into thetheological city walls. But whereas direct apologetic approaches fail, thisindirect approach neutralizes the charge of arbitrariness laid against tradi-tional religious anthropologies by drawing attention to the religious com-mitments (in the broad sense of “religious”) of so-called antireligiousinterpretations of human life. Avoiding arbitrariness then becomes merelyone of several debatable criteria for the overall adequacy of theologicalanthropology that must be weighed against other possible criteria, such asdoing justice to traditional religious insight into the human situation, ordetailed consonance with MSIH.

THE SECOND DIFFICULTY: COORDINATING MSIH AND

RELIGIOUS VISIONS OF HUMANITY

The problem of the antireligious critiques having been addressed, itremains to consider the tougher challenge: How are we to achieve critical

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consistency between MSIH and traditional religious wisdom in theologi-cal anthropology? Of course, theological anthropology does not striveafter this kind of synthesis by definition, but the question of how toachieve it is no less important for that. I shall not try to present a com-plete synthesis here, although that would be the best evidence for its pos-sibility. That has been done with varying success by many during thiscentury, from Ernest Troeltsch ([1911] 1991) to Tillich (1951–1963),from Bernard Lonergan (1957) to Rahner (1976), and among workingscholars from Gordon Kaufman (1993), Peacocke (1993), Philip Hefner(1993), and Sallie McFague (1987, 1993) to the less well known attemptsby younger writers. Here I will content myself first with arguing that sucha synthesis is a good goal for theological anthropology and then with dis-cussing a few guidelines for producing a critical consistency betweenMSIH and traditional religious wisdom in a theological interpretation ofhuman beings. The virtue of these arguments is intended to be that theybroach these themes in new ways.

It is clear from what has been said that I understand theologicalanthropology in pluralistic fashion, as including multiple approaches; thisis required by the partly ineffable character of religious realities. However,I do insist that there must be room for a rational, public (i.e., maximallyscientific, within the limits set by the topic) approach to theologicalanthropology in that mix of approaches; this is the approach that valuessynthesis with MSIH. That approach is to treat theological anthropologyas an interpretation of human beings that results from a process of inquiryunder the influence of a confessional heritage rather than an interpreta-tion of human beings that is merely determined from the outset by a relig-ious creed or tradition. Such theological anthropologies can be better orworse, and they can be improved through a process of inquiry that paysattention to all relevant information, including both MSIH and tradi-tional religious wisdom about human beings.

In my view, the fundamental hypothesis of an inquiry-oriented theo-logical interpretation of human beings and their condition is that humanbeings are oriented to primordial, ultimate mystery in their experiences,their social practices, their drives and projective impulses, their longingsand failures, their malevolence and love. The process of inquiry associatedwith the production and justification of a theological anthropology mustattempt to evaluate this hypothesis and not merely to articulate it. Andevaluation involves attending to the insights of both religious wisdom andMSIH.

It is important to note that some theologians reject my assumptionthat theological anthropology can be oriented to inquiry in some cases.The reason this matters is that the goal of synthesis with MSIH is notnecessarily desirable when theological anthropology as a form of inquiry is


rejected as impossible. The strongest argument I know against my viewand in favor of the independence of theological anthropology from MSIHderives from an extreme version of the cultural-linguistic life world per-spective. It runs as follows.

Is there not a danger in synthesizing theological anthropology and MSIH?The attempt at synthesis mistakenly presupposes that theological anthropologyand MSIH are commensurable accounts of human nature, if only becausethey can be deemed to be consonant or dissonant with one another. Under thisfalse assumption, seeking a synthesis may well induce even the most faithfulreligious people in ever-widening circles to regard religious anthropologies asarbitrary, even though the legitimacy of religious anthropologies should beestablished by their efficacy within the life worlds that support them. That is,seeking this synthesis would be both intellectually wrongheaded and needlesslydestructive of sacred and vital religious life worlds. Preserving the integrity ofthe religious life world is the overriding value. It would be better in religiouscircles to ignore MSIH and the view of theology as inquiry that forces us to payattention to MSIH if that is what preserving the integrity of the religious lifeworld requires. And this is, in fact, required. Accordingly, we must reject theassumption that it is valuable to search for a synthesis between MSIH andtheological anthropology. Instead of a synthesis, what is needed is the mainte-nance of an alternative life world, one not in thrall to the science-oriented,hegemonic worldview that is expressed in the minimalism and even the relig-ious neutrality of MSIH—one in which religious wisdom can be spoken offreely and with conviction, regardless of what other interpretations of life areoffered elsewhere. Both MSIH and religious anthropology have their placewithin cultural-linguistic life worlds, and the effectiveness of the orientation tolife thereby achieved is the only criterion for adequacy of such life worlds.

I am skeptical about this argument. Such an approach to the preserva-tion of religious wisdom about human life will have diminishing returns,because life worlds leak: they are never the secure, insulated bubbles ofdiscourse that this argument requires. On the contrary, some degree ofintersubjective debate and conversation is the only way to keep any par-ticular bubble intact and viable for defining a life world for groups of peo-ple. Historical accounts of communities bear this out in the long termand often in the short term too. A critical consistency with MSIH istherefore a practical necessity. Moreover, this argument gives up oninquiry too quickly, supposing that it is pointless even to seek a criticallyconsistent coordination of sometimes divergent worldviews. On the con-trary, however, the possibility of a synthesis can be assessed only throughextensive attempts to try to forge one. There are no good a priori argu-ments guaranteeing that inquiry will fail or succeed in achieving its lim-ited goal; we have to find out by trying. Thus, the synthesis of religious

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wisdom with MSIH is an important goal for theological anthropologyunderstood as a form of inquiry. MSIH and theological anthropology arecommensurable enough that anything less will not be intellectually orpractically viable.

There is great diversity among theological anthropologies that attendto the problem of synthesis whose solution I have argued is so important.This diversity is all the greater because I have followed Tillich in enlargingthe collection of theological anthropologies to include all those that regis-ter ultimate concern, regardless of their presupposed worldview. The typi-cal weaknesses in extant syntheses fall into several categories:

1. The failure to register traditional religious wisdom about the humancondition, as when the problems of human suffering and weaknessare neglected

2. The failure to register the impact of the biological sciences, as whentoo much directionality in the evolutionary process is assumed in or-der to ease theological pressure for a purposeful natural order

3. The failure to register the insights of the social sciences, as when thedemonstrated realities of projection, delusion, and social legitima-tion are minimized for the sake of uncomplicated theological accessto the testimony of religious experience and tradition

4. The failure to come to terms with the diversity of competitive theo-logical anthropologies

It is extremely difficult to tie all of this material together in a theologi-cal anthropology. There is an especially obvious division between the firstthree of these typical symptoms of failure and the last. This is partlybecause intellectual projects that blend comparative and constructive the-ology have only recently been attempted and partly because theologicalconstruction that is sensitive to philosophical and religious pluralism istypically not as well informed about the natural and social sciences, andvice versa. These are historical circumstances that can be changed, andthus it is on this fourth failure, the one that is most widespread by far, thatI shall focus my attention.

We have seen that not everyone accepts my argument that synthesis oftraditional religious wisdom and MSIH is an important goal, and thisshould not be forgotten. If this goal is accepted, however, then with regardto the pluralism of approaches to theological anthropology, there are twomajor ways in which the synthesis might be pursued. Each way involvesprovisional acceptance of one of the following two theses. Much of thediversity of extant theological anthropology conforms to one of these the-ses, and I shall try to make that clear by categorizing the major alterna-tives in terms of the subtheses that follow each thesis.


Thesis 1. The essence of humanity is expressed in its world environmentand relations, so MSIH gives accurate and indispensable insightsinto human life and human nature. This approach appears inat least these two forms:a. All nature including humanity is oriented to mystery (di-

vinization approaches, philosophical Daoism, process ver-sions of panentheism).

b. All mystery is limited to nature and its ground—there is nosupernature (secular humanism, religious naturalism).

Thesis 2. The essence of humanity is not expressed in its world environ-ment and relations, so MSIH gives a misleading account ofhuman life and human nature. Synthesis in this case consistsin accounting for MSIH in the process of laying out a morecomplete interpretation of human beings. Again, there are atleast two forms of approach here:a. Proper discrimination discloses a higher purpose for hu-

manity to which theological anthropology should testify(perennial philosophy, supernaturalistic salvation/libera-tion schemes, most tribal traditions).

b. Proper discrimination discloses that humanity has no es-sence, is nothing finally nameable, and nothing in particu-lar; simply to realize this fully is to free oneself, to be happyand at peace (especially Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta).

These theses and the classes of major worldviews they configure drawfresh attention to a problem of arbitrariness in theological anthropology—this time in relation not to antireligious anthropologies but to competi-tive alternatives among the theological anthropologies themselves. It isgenuinely difficult to justify one approach decisively over the others.Scant attention has been paid to this problem. I would hazard the guessthat each of these ways of interpreting human life has good prospects ofrendering itself consonant with MSIH and with traditional religious wis-dom, at least from the point of view of the tradition it represents. Moreresearch needs to be done to determine how good those prospects are inany given case. I suspect that each would find some parts of MSIH easierto absorb than others, and that the harder-to-digest parts would makesome parts of familiar religious wisdom less plausible but not others. Butadvocates of theological anthropology-as-inquiry are interested not merelyin lists of the effects of striving for consonance between MSIH and hordesof theological anthropologies but also in resolving disputes among theo-logical anthropologies and using the insights of alternative theologicalanthropologies to improve their own constructive projects. How mightthis be achieved?

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With this we come to a practical contention: The public and cross-cultural character of MSIH, together with its religiously neutral posture,make it a potentially useful tool for resolving at least some disputesamong theological anthropologies that have seemed unresolvable in thepast. MSIH establishes a criterion for plausibility that permits rationaldiscriminations among various aspects of theological anthropologies. Forexample, the joint message of cosmology and biology is that theologicalanthropologies electing to centralize the human species in a cosmo-historico-theological narrative (such as some forms of Christianity andIslam) will have a harder time with MSIH than those that do not (such assome forms of Hinduism and Buddhism). Obviously, using MSIH as acriterion will not help in every situation. Nor is it the only available toolfor discriminating otherwise indiscriminable views, as the growing tech-nologies of comparison and the long-standing effectiveness of criteriasuch as internal consistency and theoretical economy demonstrate. Never-theless, it does promise to be useful. Because it selects out aspects of theo-logical anthropologies as preferable regardless of tradition, and becauseany one tradition is unlikely to be decisively favored in this process of dis-crimination (though that remains to be seen), the problem remains ofhow to coordinate the MSIH-preferred insights into a coherent theologi-cal anthropology. That, I think, has never been tried.

The appeal to the plausibility structures of MSIH, even as prudentlyminimal as they are, can be contested. That is the point of Thesis 2 above.But even in that case, the core insights of MSIH have to be taken accountof, if only to say in detail how they are misleading or how they disguisesome other, truer reality. For example, theological anthropologies thatassume a nonphysical basis for human personhood under the aegis of con-cepts such as soul or jiva will have a hard time with MSIH’s bet on physi-calism. This leaning of MSIH, however, especially because it is at thedynamic margins of MSIH, allows intelligible dissent in the form of acounterbet that physicalism is mistaken. But dissenters need to show howMSIH’s reasons for its physicalist propensities can be taken account ofwhile still resisting physicalism itself.

Organizing these major interpretations into categories highlights someof the choices that need to be made—or that are made unawares—when atheological anthropology is defended. The main choice is between Thesis1 and Thesis 2. The key to understanding this decision is the fact that thetwo options are in dispute not over the truth of MSIH but over its statusas knowledge. Thesis 1 holds that MSIH is accurate and straightforwardlytrue and demands nothing less than consistency from any theologicalanthropology. Thesis 2, by contrast, argues that the most discriminatingaccount of human nature takes MSIH to be merely a preliminary insightfor which one must account without being misled into according it


definitive status. On Thesis 2, therefore, it would be enough to explainwhy the world appears such as to make MSIH so persuasive. In practice,many who hold views consistent with Thesis 2 display little interest inquestions of the consistency of their theological anthropologies withMSIH, for the obvious reason, as the Buddha himself might have put it,that when the house is burning and you realize that you need to flee, youdon’t pause on the way out in a fit of scientific curiosity to analyze theintricate pattern on the wallpaper. Nevertheless, these views would bemuch strengthened if a persuasive account could be given of why theworld appears for us humans in the way that MSIH recounts, an accountthat does more than simply appeal to suchness (as in some forms of Hin-duism and Buddhism) or similar inquiry-stopping concepts. The omis-sion of any treatment of so powerful a view of human beings as MSIHseems deeply suspect, though in reality—for now, at least—it seems to beat least partly the result of mere lack of interest. (This has begun to changein some Buddhist circles, including the descendents of the Kyoto Schooland Msao Abe; and the Abrahamic traditions have a long history of tan-gling with the sciences.)

The apparently intractable problem of choosing between Thesis 1 andThesis 2 can only be resolved, I think, by hypothetically adopting one orthe other in order to test the feasibility of each. In a situation such as this,the energy of personal perspective is necessary for driving the process bywhich horizons are fused and thereby (in this case) the character ofhumanity disclosed. For my part, when working specifically on theologi-cal anthropology, I seek a synthesis of traditional religious anthropologyand MSIH in provisional conformity with Thesis 1. In other research, Itry to develop a more fundamental theory of human knowledge and real-ity that is capable of explaining how the dispute between the two thesescan continue to seem intractable. My heart is with the latter approach.But everyone, surely, no matter which approach is to bear the effects oftheir energies, should carefully consider the arguments for the importanceof striving for some detailed synthesis of traditional religious and modernsecular wisdom about humanity. We may decide that the retrieval of a fewscraps of traditional religious anthropology is finally the best we can do,because MSIH sets so demanding a standard. Or we may try to relativizeMSIH as merely a limited vision of human beings. We could then, withRoman Catholic moral teaching, reintroduce souls perhaps as superven-ient or emergent or even supernatural characteristics of sufficiently com-plex organisms, after which we might be able retrieve a good deal oftraditional religious anthropology.

In any event, my aim in this paper has been to argue that MSIH isimportant and must be dealt with by theological anthropology; that relig-ious wisdom about human beings is valuable, even if it seems self-

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contradictory and out of harmony with MSIH; that these facts confirmthat striving for a synthesis is a vital goal; and that we have a choice aboutthe kind of synthesis we try to construct.

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